


Home Sweet Bank

by soufflegirl123



Category: The Gifted (TV 2017)
Genre: Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Pre-Canon, some of the others will appear later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 06:19:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17596061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soufflegirl123/pseuds/soufflegirl123
Summary: Lorna and John have been tasked with a mission. This is the story of how they find a headquarters, and all the work they put into it.





	Home Sweet Bank

The mattress was so old it had springs. Worse than that, it had springs which poked into Lorna’s hip, no matter how she tried to manipulate their shape. At least she could use the mattress as a weapon if they were attacked.

“You're thinking too loud,” John muttered. His voice was rough from sleep, and he didn't bother to open his eyes.

Lorna sat up and punched her pillow. Since he was awake anyway, there was no point in playing pretend any longer. “Your powers don't work like that.”

“No, but I can definitely hear you muttering under your breath.” He turned his face to finally look at her. The sun was only beginning to rise, and it cast an orange glow on his face. It hid the shadows under his eyes, but Lorna knew they would reappear later. When was the last time they had actually felt well-rested? All Lorna could remember feeling was sleep-deprivation, frustration, and bruises on her hips from the damn springs in the bed.

“If you’re not going to let me rip the springs out of this thing, then we should have gone with the waterbed.”

“If you rip out the springs, we’ll just be laying on a hard metal bed frame with like a centimeter of a former mattress, and do you not remember the last waterbed? We nearly drowned because of your little knife collection.”

“Those knives have come in handy.”

“Yeah, but you don’t need to clean or sharpen them while sitting in the middle of a waterbed.”

“That was one time!” 

She flopped back down. The popcorn ceiling above their heads had a number of questionable stains. The deal they had was once they had named them all, they had to move to the next place, but it had been a week since they had finally agreed that the stain in the corner was a kangaroo with a Slim Jim rather than a knife-yielding rabbit and there had been no new leads for where they should go. 

Truthfully though they had had little time to look for a place. Between helping people to arrange transport out of the country or find temporary shelter in the other headquarters, helping others to escape sentinel services, and doing the odd jobs to get some extra income for food and shelter, they were barely managing to find time to handle basic living functions, nevermind finding a place to set up as their own. They had come close three times, going off recommendations from their sources. All three had fallen through before they could make any headway. The Purifiers in the Atlanta area were particularly relentless and had set up patrols too close to any abandoned buildings for them to be comfortable calling them home. 

They were in purgatory. 

“What are we doing today?” 

John stretched. “Actually,...”

Lorna leaned over him. “Did you find something? Please say you found something!” 

John winced. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Lorna lowered her voice quickly. John’s nerves had been even more on edge than usual between the lack of sleep and the general noise of their area. The motel’s walls were thin, and it wasn’t too far from several busy streets and bars. 

“It’s fine,” he assured. “But could you get off my hair?”

Sure enough, the hand she was currently bracing herself on was tangled into his loose hair. “Oh yeah! My bad! But tell me what you found?”

He pushed himself up. “Remember those riots that happened a few weeks back? And what happened after?”

“Of course.” It had been the only thing on people’s minds since it happened. Those without the mutant gene, even those who had been allies before, were suddenly worried they might be killed in a crossfire or by a teenager who wasn’t in control of their own powers. Mutants, whether passing or not, walked around on eggshells, worried about being recognized and harassed. John and Lorna had been busier than ever trying to help others in the aftermath. 

“I was thinking about that orphanage.” 

Oh hell. She knew exactly what he was thinking. 

“No one’s been out there since-.” Her hands clenched into fists at the thought. “We would be moving into a graveyard.”

“I know, but the others are afraid to go there. They’re treating it like it’s a radiation zone along with several other buildings in the area.”

“And what if it is a radiative wasteland?”

“It isn’t.”

Lorna glared at him. “John” 

He threw up his hands in surrender. “I didn’t go there myself,” he quickly clarified. Wondering off without telling the other first would be more her thing. “But I did overhear some mutants who went scavenging up there.” 

She grimaced at the thought. “Scumbags.”

“Desperate, Lorna,” he reminded her. She knew. She had been in enough situations herself to know just what a person would stoop to in bad situations. Still, the idea of scavenging through a graveyard of mutant children set her nerves on edge. 

John sighed. “Look, it’s not my ideal either, but we don’t have any other choices.” His hands reached up to thread through his hair, but Lorna knew that in this situation it would only lead to tugging. She gave his hand a little warning tap, just hard enough that he could feel it, and he quickly dropped it back onto the bed. 

“We’ll make it work. Maybe we can do a memorial or something. Honor them before we barge in on them.”

John smiled at that. “I didn’t think it was your style.”

“Yeah, well, someone should do it.” She pulled herself out of the bed. “Anyway, the sooner we get up, the sooner we get things done. I call the shower first.”

“I’ll head down and get us breakfast.”

Ah yes. Their usual free breakfast of chunks of fruits, yogurt, and partially stale bagels with cream cheese. That’s what she had to look forward. It wasn’t the best, but it was the best they could afford without dipping into the scant savings the X-Men had left for them to start up their headquarters with. Maybe they would at least have doughnuts too that day. 

She took longer than she usually would in the shower, wanting to rid herself of the grime she could feel seeping out of the motel’s walls. There was also the fact that if they did decide to use the orphanage it might be a while before they got the water back up and running. 

In the bedroom, John had returned. She could hear him turning on the tv and taking a seat at the little table in the corner. It would be a good day then if he was already subjecting himself to the scraping of chair legs rather than trying to find anywhere else to sit in the tiny room. Good. That was good. 

The bad days were hard on both of them. She wasn’t naturally a nurturing type. She got uncomfortable around sick people and terrified around crying people. John was her exception. Probably because he was the exact opposite. He excelled at being nurturing towards others. It was himself that he was a mess at handling. For whatever reason though, he brought out the “feelings” side of her, and she found that as long as it was only the two of them, she didn’t mind so much. 

Maybe he was rubbing off on her. After all, he certainly didn’t mind showing his care for her in different ways. Like the eyeliner she was currently lining her eyes with. It was one of the few luxuries she had left, and the week before she had been scraping out the last dredges of it until John returned home from a quick store run with a bag containing her favorite brand of eyeliner and one of those personal cakes from a grocery store bakery. When she had teased him about what the special occasion might be, he had given her a cheeky grin. “It’s our six month anniversary.” 

Six months since they had first been introduced to each other. Now six months and one week exactly since they had been taken aside by one of the few remaining X-men, one whom they both owed their lives to. There had been others there too, but she and John had hit it off best just as Evangeline had predicted. When everyone else had headed out to their recommended areas, Evangeline had only given the two of them one place. “Work together. Neither of you is the type to be alone.”

That order had led to shared motel rooms which had led to shared histories, shared clothes, and over the past few months, a shared bed. The bed had come from both a lack of funds and the realization that they both slept better with someone next to them. It was never anything romantic. The closest thing Lorna could think of to label it was a “platonic twin flame”. 

Lorna didn’t put her eyeliner back on the shelf. She took it and everything else she could find and packed it all into a bag before finally exiting the bathroom. 

There were no doughnuts. Damn. John glanced up from his coffee. “That’s my shirt you’re wearing.”

“And that’s my hair tie in your hair.”

“I do have my hair ties own, you know.”

“Yes, but you snapped the last of your little ‘ouch free’ ties yesterday. That one has metal on it. Obviously, it’s mine.” She sat down at the table with him and dove into her breakfast, ignoring John's mutters about how he only bought that kind because the metal pieces caused hair breakage. “I’ll let you keep borrowing it though as long as I get to keep this shirt today.” 

“Deal. Are you going to tell me why you packed all the bathroom stuff in your bag?” 

“I’ve decided that whether this plan of ours works out or not, we can’t stay here any longer.”

She ripped open all three packets of sweetener he had gotten and dumped them in her coffee, knowing that he just preferred to torture with the sludge rather than subject himself to artificial poison as he called it. She hated sweet coffee, but the stuff the motel served was not palatable otherwise. 

“Are the bed springs getting to you?”

She raised an eyebrow. 

“Fine fine. I agree. We need to get out of these place, but can you at least tell me why you didn’t leave me any soap for my shower?”

Oh yeah. She had forgotten that part. She dug through the bag and handed him the motel issued mini bottles. “Pack them back up when you’re done. I’ll get us more.”

That was exactly what she did. She slipped back downstairs to the free breakfast buffet and grabbed plates of bagels, slipping them into ziplock bags and then into her backpack whenever the staff wasn’t looking her way. That should last them a few meals. She tossed in some little packets of jams and anything else she could find that will keep for a few days without refrigeration. Luckily, they had put out some of those mini boxes of cereal that day too, and she grabbed handfuls of them. 

Next was a trip to the employee only supply closets. She always did the stealing part. John could do it, but he usually felt guilty about it. It was just easier to handle it all herself. She unfolded her reusable shopping bags (hey, she was a thief, but she was also environmentally friendly) and tossed in soaps, shampoos, and tubes of toothpaste. Towels. They needed some of those too. A few sets of sheets, and then on second thought, a few extra because they would need them at their headquarters when other people started to come through. Then there were the boxes of washing powders that she didn’t know when they would be able to use, but she did know those were expensive and clean laundry was ideal.

There wasn’t much in the way of first aid or feminine supplies, but she made sure to grab what they did have of both. She had one bag with nothing but toilet paper in it: the most necessary of supplies. 

Satisfied that she had grabbed everything she could, she loaded her arms down with the bags and headed straight out to their junker of a car and tossed it all into the trunk. She really hoped they wouldn’t have to resort to sleeping in the vehicle again. That had been a bad few nights. 

John was out of the shower and had packed up the rest of their things by the time she arrived back in their room. 

“We should hurry. I might have been a little less than subtle when grabbing the toilet paper.”

He effortlessly picked up the bulk of their bags himself. “How much did you take this time?” There was nothing accusatory about his words. He was just trying to figure out how much more they might need.

“I got enough for the week or so if we’re careful. I got some longer-term things too. We still need water. I saw some boxes of bottled water around the back, but I didn’t have any free hands.”

“I’ll get those. Just point them out.”

That was how they left the motel they had been living in for the past three weeks: with a trunk and backseat filled with stolen supplies and only a general idea of where they were going. 

*****

Maybe it had been a bad idea after all. The closer they got, the more John could sense. He suppressed what he could, but the pain of it all had his hands tightening around the steering wheel until it began to creak under the pressure. It was unlike anything he had experienced before, at least in what was supposed to be a civilian area. He could hear their screams. He could see them running. And then the end. 

“John!” Lorna had taken control of the car and forced it to a stop in the middle of the abandoned road. It was one of her newer abilities, and it left her panting. The steering wheel had hand shaped dents in it. 

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “There’s a lot of chaos here.”

“How about I take over driving, and you just navigate for a while?”

 

John shook his head. “It’s just around the corner. I can handle it,” he promised. “I’ll even leave the steering wheel in one piece. Just a little more worn than before.”

“If you say so.”

The orphanage was still standing. At least the frames of it were. They wandered through the remains. John was careful to not touch anything he didn’t need to, while Lorna used her abilities to search under the wreckage and to test the sturdiness of the building. 

“This is worse than I thought,” John admitted. “But maybe we could…,” he trailed off, biting back his words at the sight of a toddler-sized skeleton alone in what had been the corner of a room. “Shit,” he turned away.

“We’ll burn it,” Lorna said. “That’s all we can do.” She swiped angrily at her own eyes. 

“Lorna,-”

She shook her head. “No, I can’t-I couldn’t live here after seeing this. Hell, you can’t even touch anything. There’s got to be another option.” 

They stood there for a few moments. “The other buildings we passed-,” John started. “Do you remember what they were?”

Lorna shrugged. “A few small houses, one medium-sized farm, a bank, um-I think there was a grocery store or something a little further back.”

“The bank. Do you remember how it looked?” He couldn’t remember feeling much off of it or really looking it over. He had been too concerned with finding the orphanage then. 

“It had more walls than this place.” 

They exchanged a look. 

“It’d be big.”

“Pretty secure.”

“It could work.” 

Their excitement was died down as they surveyed their surroundings again. 

“You know we can’t actually burn it,” John murmured. The fire could build up too high and draw too much attention. 

“We can’t bury all the remains either.” Lorna was quick to protest that. “Not without a team anyway. We’ll come back one day.”

“Yeah,” he agreed reluctantly. “One day.”

Back into the junker. Back down the road. When they reached the bank, they both sat in the car for a few moments just staring. 

“This is it.”

“We haven’t even looked at it.”

Lorna grinned. “I’ve got a good feeling. C’mon. Last one in has to clean the bathrooms!”

**Author's Note:**

> It's a slow start, but this story is basically going to be a fluffy and later comedic take on John and Lorna attempting to rebuild the bank and assemble a team.


End file.
